Usually, when I downvote something, I try to weigh three factors against each other:
How much do I want others to see this?
How much time & effort would it take me to explain to the person why I think their comment is misguided?
How likely is it that I would influence the poster’s behavior productively?
I usually try to explain why I downvoted something, but I often have the impression that a simple “lurk moar”/”read the sequences and the codex”/”be more precise/formal/factual” would be the most accurate advice (most bad posts are meandering, imprecise and unstructured).
I wonder whether it’s nicer to comment and recommend someone to read the sequences and the codex than to strong-downvote them (I would guess that for most people, the psychological effect of the latter is much worse). For some reason, the former has kind of fallen out of fashion here.
Also, over time, I have learned that there are some topics that it’s pretty much hopeless to discuss about online: the E word, the C word, the G word, the other C word. At the least, for a conversation, there needs to be a shared understanding that you both know that you’re not just GPT-3ing the whole thing out.
Usually, when I downvote something, I try to weigh three factors against each other:
How much do I want others to see this?
How much time & effort would it take me to explain to the person why I think their comment is misguided?
How likely is it that I would influence the poster’s behavior productively?
I usually try to explain why I downvoted something, but I often have the impression that a simple “lurk moar”/”read the sequences and the codex”/”be more precise/formal/factual” would be the most accurate advice (most bad posts are meandering, imprecise and unstructured).
I wonder whether it’s nicer to comment and recommend someone to read the sequences and the codex than to strong-downvote them (I would guess that for most people, the psychological effect of the latter is much worse). For some reason, the former has kind of fallen out of fashion here.
Also, over time, I have learned that there are some topics that it’s pretty much hopeless to discuss about online: the E word, the C word, the G word, the other C word. At the least, for a conversation, there needs to be a shared understanding that you both know that you’re not just GPT-3ing the whole thing out.